Bilingual?

[StressedWorriedSkye]

Is anyone practicing bilingual routines with their children?
Did it work for you, and how did it go?
I’ve heard the advice: one person, one language. I speak English, and the father is Dutch — so he’s supposed to speak Dutch to our child, but he often switches between English and Dutch.
Curious how others handle this!

there are different methods.

One parent one language is best where the parents have different mother tongues - they should speak their native language to the children. That sounds like your set-up, OP?

You could also do the Minority Language At home model - so if you are in UK and your partner is Dutch you could exclusively use Dutch at home. But that only works if your Dutch is flawless.

My tip (Minority Language At Home model for us, both British in a different country) is to read the goodnight stories and so on in both languages (so you read twice as much) and to learn songs and games in both languages too.

Children often react in predictable ways in bilingual households. For eg they might speak to all children initially in the same language (mine spoke German to all children, because that is what they were used to from Kindergarten) and English to all adults because we spoke English. (yeah, kindergarten teachers confused them at first), Then when they get to about 5 they have a phase of refusing to speak the minority language, because not all their friends do that. etc etc

But it does pay off in the end (my DC are adults now)

I worked as an aupair for a family who’s father spoke the native tongue of the country they lived in, and the mum was a native English speaker but was also fluent in the other language.

they did exactly as you mentioned, one speaks only one language, the other parent speaks only the other language.

generally the children will default to replying in the language of the country they are in as it is more familiar and they hear it everyday but they definitely understand more than they would have you think. Even the 2 year old understood everything that was being said in both languages but for ages they would only respond in the home country language.

it will just be about perseverance on you partners side. One thing the mum would always do, if they replied in the wrong language would be to remind them that she will only answer them if they ask again in English. It’s slow and frustrating to begin with but they all now speak both languages fluently. I also remember when the whole family even the siblings cheered with excitement when the 2 year old spoke English for the first time! It was just the word “ball” but it took him until almost 3 to say his first word in English even though he absolutely understood it!

another thing to be aware of but to not pay too much attention to, is sometimes being exposed to two languages can delay speak or reading skills but then all of a sudden it all clicks and they more than catch up with their peers. So whatever you do, don’t stop using both languages!

You speak the language they won't speak at school - so in uk you'd speak Dutch in the home and in school kid would quickly pick up English as they spend a significant amount of time in school at some point.

When in the UK we spoke two languages and a bit of English (play groups were English etc)

We've moved abroad to a country with regional languages so now we English at home and they speak another language in school and a third is a bonus but no longer a focus (very broken). Keeping the method of one language at home and other in school has worked really well for us and switching that up - 9 and 11 are very fluent in both, I'd argue they sound native in both!

We tried OPOL, but my DH tended to speak to DS in English a lot, since we lived in UK and he’d lived there for years. I had to keep reminding him. DS does speak the second language, but not to mother tongue level. We all speak both languages at home, and we now live in a third country, so have that in the mix.

We spend most holidays, and several weeks in summer, in DH country, which helps.

In your case, I’d really encourage your DH to just speak Dutch with your child, as it’ll be harder the older he gets, especially with peer pressure to speak English.

I agree with what everyone said so far and remember they have a whole childhood to master those language skills.

We kind of screwed up with ours and we let the non English language become dominant even though we were always intending to educate in English (and just moved back to the UK to do this) and now he's quite delayed in English and has a preference for 2nd language, hopefully he will catch up. Also tricky for us because 2nd language is very different grammatically, probably easier with English/Dutch.

For us we spend a lot of time in 2nd country so that gives time to practice speaking the other language. I don't know what your life is like but regular trips to netherlands might help encourage that as well. Also if your child makes friends with other dutch kid(s) that can help as well.

One thing the mum would always do, if they replied in the wrong language would be to remind them that she will only answer them if they ask again in English.

i only did that with mine when they were secondary age. Up to then i just carried on - i couldn't pretend i didn't understand because i am fluent in the local language - but just persisted in speaking English whatever language they answered in.

One thing that doesn't often get mentioned is grandparents and wider family. I knew an English chap here, had been in the army and married a German woman. His InLaws forced him to speak German (they lived with them) all the time, and stopped him speaking English to his children. When i met them his children were about 10 and barely spoke English. They were literally cut off from speaking to their paternal grandparents, and (because his fil tried to tell me that speaking english to my kids would damage them) finally i told him to imagine that his grandchildren couldn't talk to him in his language and how badly he would think of the person who made that happen. he never spoke to me again, but that's his loss not mine.

also i was doing this in the 90s - no YouTube and so on to help me out.

(funnily enough we did watch a lot of Dutch TV because of English subtitles - so in the evening, but the DCs also picked up a bit of that)

So now they are mid 20s and nobody believes they are British when they speak Local, or the other way round. They have picked up 3rd languages easily, and one is working well in a 4th too.

There was a slight speech and reading delay, and i had to fight apparently educated pedagogues on this a LOT. (as in not referring them to specialists in speech delay). with #2 i was so sick of it i let them get a speech therapist in who laughed at them and pointed out that i was perfectly correct about bilingual kids. (to be fair, we live in a rural area with very few bilingual kids)

Got 2 bilingual young adults here! We were very diligent about doing OPOL when they were little. So much so that DP still only speaks to them in his native language. I speak the other language fluently so once they were a bit older we tried to speak only in the second language at home and we now speak frequently in Engliano, switching between the two!

My cousins grew up in France, they spoke French outside the house but English whenever they were at home just with their mum and dad. This also helped the French parent to learn English.

We brought DD up fully bilingual (Welsh/English).

It was never really a specific parent for either language although it’s ended up that way. DD coped well; she apparently thinks better in one language than the other but that’s because of school rather than home.

She had no problems with language or reading; she could read to age appropriate fluency in both languages by age 6.

There are some good studies that show the benefits of being bilingual for children.

What we did was make sure that both languages were treated equally - so books, tv etc in both languages.

She can still flip between languages, her partner has said it’s fun watching sometimes as if it’s the 3 of us (DH / DD / me) the languages merge and swap mid sentence.

Hopefully your partner will be able to help with the Dutch.

We did OPOL and it’s worked really well for us. DH will only ever speak his native language to the kids and they find it a bit strange if he speaks otherwise to them. It was quite effortless to do it this way and DH prefers his native language any way and will carry it on regardless of when they grow up, as it’s the most natural thing. The kids speak both of our native languages now since they first started talking and now that we’ve moved countries from my original one, they’re learning the local language too through the school. As a side point, I didnt speak DHs language until we had kids and I was exposed to it so much at home through their conversations so that’s also a big benefit for us.

We are in Netherlands. I look for bilingual kindergarten. But later school will be Dutch, Dutch friends etc. I’m worried English wil be not native.

My children have English and the local language at home, and the wider family predominantly speaks a different language. I am their only source of English input (aside from basic English lessons at school). Aged 8 they are completely native in all three languages. It took a good few years for their accent in English to be the same as mine, though. So I think you can relax, your English input will be enough.

We did English at home and community language outside (French).

English is so powerful and ubiquitous, especially in the Netherlands I wouldn't worry about them learning it.

I would expect a certain amount of confusion because of the proximity of Dutch and English but school will help with that.

I'm a Brit, DH is French

Since birth, I spoke to the kids in English, DH spoke French.

Kids would reply to me in French when very small (under aged 2) but after six months just replied in English.

Both fluent by aged 3.

The trick is to never speak the other language, if they don't understand, just explain what you mean.

It's utterly magic for them being bilingual.

One thing that is interesting with bilingual people is that they often express their personalities differently depending on which language they are speaking in.

one of mine has a much deeper voice in the other language. Funnily enough, despite never having lived in England, they consider themselves culturally English (that is because 2 english parents) which is also helped along by their use of memes, films, etc etc

We live in a spanish speaking country and didn't do too much research on the topic. We just went with what worked for us and didn't put too much pressure on ourselves to do it right.

My son speaks Spanish at school and with friends, I speak German to him when we are alone and as a family we all speak English together. The dad has decided not to use his mother tongue as he doesn't want to add another language to the mix and it is only spoken by a very limited amount of people.

It's working well for us but I think part of it is because I work part time and have a lot of time alone with our son to speak German. Even so, German is his weakest language and we have invested a lot in strengthening it through German Au Pairs and playgroups with German speaking families in the area.
Son always responds to the langue he is spoken to in. Never had the situation of someone asking a question in one langue and him replying in another.

We do OPOL, but we both have a different common language, so I speak my first language with the kids and my husband generally speaks his. However we now live in my husbands country, so he speaks a mix of his language and English, but English is compulsory here anyway, so our youngest would still learn it if he didn’t do that.

Ours are ten and 4, the only time I don’t use my first language is when I’m with them at things like medical appointments and parents evening.

We’re also a bsl family too, so thats four languages in the mix.

Opol helped me too. Take some time to read about it, it's really powerful, but not for everyone. Here is some info I found -
littlelingo.co.uk/bilingual-life/the-one-parent-one-language-method/

Can you find any other Dutch speaking families locally?
My children are French/ English bilingual living in France with a French dad and I’m English. We have a big English speaking community here and it’s almost cool for them to be speaking English together. Even the children who speak stronger French enjoy speaking English with the other English speaking families.
My husband will speak some English to the children and I some French to them so they feel it’s normal to speak both.

If you are in the Netherlands they are likely to be pretty bilingual anyway.

However, I'd speak English at home. They will get Dutch in school.

We did minority language at home and my children never had the phase of refusing to speak the minority language - I actually assumed that was because everyone spoke it at home, not just one parent. Several children close in age and they still speak to one another in the minority language - at nursery the teachers told me they spoke the community language all the time except if they quarreled with one another, when they switched to the home language! 🤣 They didn't know they did it though - when they were little they could never tell me which language they'd been speaking, they just spoke.

It definitely paid off - everything outside the home was in the community language and we made sure they mixed extensively with monolingual children from babyhood - parent and baby groups, toddlers groups, music groups, hours in the village playground - living in the countryside helped as they didn't know anyone else with the home language.

One child could pretty much simultaneously translate by age four but the others never could - linguistic skills don't come as easily to all children. The one who could translate so well speaks other languages too now, the others struggled when learning an actual "foreign" language - they have two native languages, and different siblings are stronger/ happier in either community or family language but all sound like native speakers in both.

Obviously for minority language at home you both have to speak the minority language to native speaker standard.

One parent one language works best if the primary caregiver is the minority language speaker (so if you live in the Netherlands you, if you live in the UK/ English speaking country their dad).

If the minority language parent doesn't speak the minority language to them enough it will never be as strong unless they move to the country at some point, but it's still useful to be able to talk to very old or very young members of that side of the family, to access that part of their heritage, and has various brain development benefits.

My son married a Norwegian girl they live in Norway however visit our family in Scotland regularly.
My son and his wife are keen to ensure they keep Scottish roots.
They decided early on my son would speak English and his wife would speak Norwegian and they stuck to this.
By age 4 they were both fluent in both languages.
They also love to add wee Scottish words regularly and teach everyone in Scotland some Norwegian words when they visit. This worked for them kids are now age 13 and 15 years. Good luck.

I live in central-ish London and my DC go to a primary with lots of parents from all over the world and many where the parents have different native languages. In fact I think the DC who aren’t at least bilingual are a minority (and quite a few kids are trilingual). Generally each parent speaks to the DC in their own language. In a few cases the dads haven’t bothered as they didn’t want the DC to ever move to their home country, or the dads just weren’t around enough when the DC were little to make their language stick. But then the DC have no common language with their paternal grandparents, which is very sad.